Hello, Friday. Hello sleepovers with friends and bottles of new wines and evenings for bundling up. We’ll welcome Saturday, with its party preparations and kitchen hour musings and experimental recipes. Then Sunday will come, and we’ll heat the coals and stir the pots and be merry until Monday comes round again.

It’s Friday again, friends. Weeks seem to be going by too fast recently. I never say that, but doesn’t it feel that way? The worst part — the part I don’t like to think about — are the weekends that try to keep up the pace and come and go as quickly as the week did. But they are great while they last, aren’t they?

What will you do this weekend?

On Sunday, we’re having the annual Dutch Oven cookoff (photos from last year here) on my aunt’s street. It’s going to be my dad’s first big event after his stay at the hospital, so we’re going to work together to cook up a chili relleno medley in the Dutch oven. I’m excited to see everyone, and to introduce some of my friends to Dutch oven cooking. We’re expecting at least 60 people, so let the lineup of pots begin!

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Oh, and I wanted to share these summery photos with you before our summery weather leaves us completely. These are from a lunch hour spent at the Grape Festival a few weeks ago. I photograph it every year, and I hope you don’t mind. I took them all with my iPhone because on that day I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting my camera battery in the charger back at the office. But good ol’ Hipstamatic came through. Enjoy, and have a fabulous weekend.